Plaicehunter

A very smart outfit and a good compromise between trailability and usability I should think. I see you have an auxiliary bracket. Do you carry a second engine? The only things I would want would be some lockers and grab rails. Maybe lockers are not so important as unlike me, your boat is not left on a mooring with equipment on board. But safety rails are a feature I would not want to be without, especially when standing to fish or moving about the boat in any kind of sea. The seat forward of the console is a great feature, giving you a backrest. I often think smaller boats like ours get more use than bigger ones. Yours certainly does! PH

What a handsome boat, and she should be very economical to run! It's good that you have a relationship with the previous owner and are taking the time to do things properly. Having fished the Shambles in a charter boat and a private boat and experienced the formidable tides and rips, I think you are very wise to steer clear until you have more experience. Local anglers who have fished the area for years seem to use the 'buddy boat' system so they can help each other out in case of a problem or to find the fish. I also live very close to my boat, and it's a great advantage knowing what the local weather actually is rather than what the forecasters say it should be. Weymouth has a lot of fishing options in all but the worst weather. Unlike you, I am on a drying trot mooring, so am a bit more restricted by tides - although it's only £200 a year! I'm sure a lot of people will envy your boat and situation and you will have no problem finding a crew if you want one. Happy boating and fishing! PH

Bass 8lb 6oz on a topwater lure in 2020, returned. PH

No, I would have to update the steering for one thing, and I don't do much long-range fishing where speed is essential. Most of the time I am pottering about, but local tides can be fierce and it's good to have a bit of oomph. When I bought the boat it had a Mercury 60 which seemed to go all right, but when it was serviced it was found to have bad internal corrosion. I couldn't find a decent second-hand engine so finally bit the bullet and bought new. Just after that I stumbled across a Yamaha 90 in mint condition at a really good price! Sod's Law, but the Mariner EFi has been very good so far. PH

And bait fishing for gilts - I had 54 to 6lb in 2020, but enjoy bass luring more. PH

If it had a clean bottom and a 115 it would do 50mph on flat water - I've seen the video. I have a Mariner 60 which gets it up on the plane OK but most of my time is spent in the Tamar doing economical displacement speeds as the limit is 10 knots. PH

Yamarin 5400! Spellcheck DOESN'T know best! PH

Pictured in Stonehouse Pool, Plymouth, with the Royal William Yard in the background. PH

Dear Outlaws, I have posted my pathetic attempt at videoing on YouTube. Obviously I haven't got to grips with editing yet, but at least you get to see one of the eels. The whole thing lasts just over a minute, including the blank bit in the middle. I enjoyed the bit where the fish dived and I'm clearly heard to cry "Oh sh*t!" It's called Conger battle on the Tamar. Enjoy! PH

My best advice about fishing Lanzarote is to contact Pete Berry - blumeeni on another popular sea fishing forum. Pete is an expat Welshman who lives near Playa Blanca and is the local expert. He has helped literally dozens of visitors to catch memorable fish from the shore, thankfully including me. The result is a WhatsApp group called Lanza Louts, guys from all over Europe with one thing in common: they have all fished with Pete. While he enjoys lure fishing from the shore (Pete doesn't do boats, though he has friends in Lanzarote who do), he catches most of his big fish on boga livebait. They include bluefish, bonito and barracuda, as well as predatory bream and dorado. I spent a week shore fishing in PB last February/March and caught lots of fish, including bonito of 11lb and 9lb on livebait. I hope to go again once Covid permits. And yes, do get a licence - best to buy online to save a lot of hassle! Hope this helps. PH

These are pretty special! Hard to catch, hard-fighting and apparently delicious (I don't eat fish) PH

No, but I am on WhatsApp. PH

I don't bring conger into my 18ft open boat. I T-bar them off at the side if possible and cut them off only if the hooks are deep. Three of the four were lip-hooked fortunately! I did try to film one of the bigger ones, but playing an angry 6ft conger with one hand in a fast tide while holding a phone in the other hand is not easy! The video clip was too big to load on here. PH

A hectic four hours of uptiding on the Tamar today yielded four conger and some good whiting to 1lb 11oz. The first eel was around 10lb, but was dwarfed by the next, a real 'anaconda' of around 6ft long and very thick-set. A 'cod' on the whiting rod mysteriously turned into a 5lb eel as it surfaced in the fast ebb tide. And the final fish of the day was another whopping eel, which fought hard with crash dives, vicious head-shakes and vigorous spinning. The big eels came to whole joey mackerel baits on a pulley pennell, the whiting to a two-hook flapper baited with squid and mackerel pieces. Great sport not far from home! PH

Lockdown means local fishing, so recently I have focused on marks I can reach on foot from my home in Plymouth. Fortunately, this includes boat fishing, as 'Piranha' is kept on a mooring less than half a mile away in Stonehouse Pool. I can't claim to have caught anything spectacular since my last report, the highlight being a 4lb 10oz codling from the Tamar in early December. I was uptiding from a buoy just upstream of Mashford's (UK Docks) boatyard using two rods, one with whole squid on a pulley pennell and the other with mackerel and squid pieces on a two-hook flapper. The codling took the whiting rig and contained several lumps of squid, a mackerel wrapped in bait elastic and three hardback crabs. It looked to me to have been hoovering up discarded bait! In the same session I had some decent whiting. Other trips to the same spot have yielded several strap conger, a doggie, a sizeable edible crab and a hermit crab. Every session has produced plenty of whiting, though the size has decreased recently. I have tried live bait on a third rod, either with a slider or dropped down the side, but without any takes. I've also had a couple of boat trips after mackerel, the first a blank and the second producing 20 to small sabikis (Mustad Piscator #6) in one brief burst just off the Royal Western Yacht Club in Plymouth Sound. From the shore I've been concentrating on fishing for mackerel from West Hoe pier. Apart from one session when I had seven on the sabikis, it's been all light float-fishing with mackerel strip. I've had fish every trip, including a January garfish, but the most mackerel in a session (usually only a couple of hours) has been eight. Most of the fish have come with the float set at 9-10ft and on a rising tide. I'm still catching, and had four more yesterday afternoon (Jan 13). So, whiting and mackerel - nothing spectacular but some sport at a traditionally slack time of year, and without breaking any Covid rules! I hope this report has been helpful and encouraging. If you can, get out there and give it a go! PH

It was like summer in November today at my local estuary. The sun came out, the wind dropped, terns were diving and bass started splashing on the top. They wouldn't touch a surface lure though, and the medicine proved to be a Komomo II Silver Scale retrieved with plenty of rod-tip twitches. The surface action lasted an hour, but I still managed to pick up a few more fish by moving around and trying likely spots. I finished with 30 fish, but couldn't find any bigger than 40cm. The Komomo is a great little lure, but the finish was pretty scuffed up by the end of the session and I'm not keen on three trebles, even though I crushed the barbs.This session was totally different from yesterday: the fish were in a different area and needed a shallow-running lure with a different retrieve. That's what makes bass luring so interesting! PH

Despite a cold N wind and a small tide, I ventured out on a local estuary today. It was hard work, but I managed 9 schoolies, the best 46cm on a Flatbacker 110mm slow-sinking diver. It took me round a mooring chain, but luckily I managed to get both fish and lure back. I did have one fish and several missed takes on a Patchinko 125, but everything else was down deep. All bass were returned as usual. PH

Beesands is a lovely spot, though a slow drive from Plymouth. Apparently gar make good eating, though their green bones put some people off. I don't eat fish at all and usually put gar back, but kept two today for whiting bait as the dog has eaten all my mackerel! PH

This was a tub, the ones with a bright blue edge to the pectoral fins. Although they are apparently good eating, they are far too pretty to kill. Although they live on the bottom, they are highly predatory and often take a small jig or dropper lure worked close to the sea bed. They are also frequently found on the same marks as plaice. I am always pleased to catch one. PH

Here in sunny South Devon, mackerel can turn up in any month of the year. However, my shore spinning session today at Beesands yielded just five garfish and a pretty tub gurnard. The two biggest garfish came home for whiting bait; everything else went back. Not a thrilling report I know, but good to get out in the fresh air and paddle in the waves! PH

With high winds forecast way ahead I ventured out on the Tamar yesterday in search of cod. Some have been caught, and all the local shore hotspots are rammed. No crowds for me though as I tied 'Piranha' to a handy mooring buoy just off the main channel to fish the last of the ebb and most of the flood. Three rods went out: an uptider with a two-hook flapper for whiting, another uptider with a large calamari on a pulley pennell and a downtider with a whiting livebait. Later on I switched the heavy uptider to a livebait slider rig baited with a 10" whiting and put a dead pout on the downtider. I can't report anything dramatic: lots of whiting to a pound on squid/mackerel cocktails, some hefty pout and several conger to 7-8lb. Conger are a nuisance in the Tamar when using squid or fish bait; ideally I would use peeler for the cod but at 80p a crab (when you can get it) it's too expensive for me. I work on the theory that a hungry cod will take almost any bait, and I have had codling, bass and rays on squid, so I stick to that. That looks like my last boat trip for a few days till the wind calms down. Anyone else on here fish the Tamar? PH

Wouldn't be without my two HTO Nebulas - and a Patchinko 125. PH

Hi, everybody! I'm Graham Broach, aka Plaicehunter. I've been fishing for 60 years, which is strange as I feel only about 35... I do all sorts of angling, but this year I have spent most of my time fishing the Tamar from my boat 'Piranha', a Yamarin 5400 with a 60EFi on the back. I managed to hit my season's target of 50 gilthead bream with a bit to spare, and do a lot of bass luring from the boat - best this year 8lb 6oz on a Patchinko 125. I also do a fair bit of plaice fishing from my pal AW's boat, based near Salcombe, plus the occasional reef trip with him. In the winter I fish for cod and thornbacks in the Tamar from my boat, though I catch a lot more conger than cod! Last winter I had a nice 5lb bass on a 10" live whiting intended for cod, and am aiming to fish one rod with a livebait slider rig this winter. Cod are in the river already.... Most of my fishing is catch-and-release, with ALL bass being returned regardless of size. Tight lines to you all! Graham

You don't need to spend a fortune on spinning reels. I use a Quantum Drive 30, £29.99 from BobCo in Leeds. Smooth as silk, very light, loads of bearings, decent drag, perfect line lay, no wind knots (with 1.0 Sunline Siglon 8-strand). If you used it without knowing what it was, you'd swear it was a high-end Shimano or Daiwa. It's even better (and cheaper) than the Quantum Throttle it replaces. At that price, you could use it for a season and throw it away, or buy another one and keep it for spares, but I just don't seem to be able to wear mine out...